Jesus finally wraps up His ‘Sermon on the Mount’ in Matthew 7:24-29. Let’s highlight the main points He has made in “these words of Mine.”
Remember that Matthew prefaced
Jesus’ sermon in 4:23 by calling His message the “gospel of the kingdom." He then records Jesus' sermon to the crowd there in Galilee.
As we saw in our previous study, Jesus
begins by describing the “blessed ones” – the ones who will enter the kingdom
someday. Their lives
are characterized by righteousness both in their behavior as well as in their
attitudes. They are not surprised by
their persecution but go on rejoicing and letting their light shine so that God
is glorified not themselves. They have a
reward in heaven for every deed done that glorifies Him, whether seen or not. Their concern is for others as well as for
themselves that God’s kingdom would come on earth as it is in heaven and that
His will would be done here as well.
They prioritize their resources toward that end and trust God to supply
their daily needs.
They recognize that
it is not their duty to condemn but to be constructive and not hypocritical in
their evaluation of others. They
recognize that not everyone is mature enough to handle every truth they might hear. The kingdom of God and all that
pertains to it right now is to be asked for, sought, and the door knocked
on. All this wisdom can be summed up in
the revelation given to Moses and the prophets in what we call the “golden rule.”
This kingdom path is narrow and exclusive; it
is hard to find and difficult to execute because so few are going that
way. Many will come and falsely claim to
speak for God, but their fruit, that is their message, is contradicted by Jesus’
message. That is how you can identify
them. In the end many of these false
prophets will be surprised to discover that entrance to the kingdom requires a
relationship to the King. Any other path
leads to destruction.
So now Jesus
says that His words that we have just reviewed are wisdom. The one who “hears” is wise. Hearing here means more than passively
monitoring a sermon or taking notes.
It means putting them into practice.
(James calls this a “doer of the Word and not a hearer only.”) Jesus compares this kind of hearing with a
wise man who builds his house on bedrock.
He starts his efforts in life with a sound foundation. There will come a time of testing where the
foundation will make all the difference in the world. (Paul talks about the foundation which is
Christ which will save even if all the rest is burned up in 1 Corinthians
3. Paul goes on to speak of the wisdom
of the builder who is careful how he builds on the foundation because our
rewards are in view.) For now, Jesus is
speaking mainly of the foundation which will save the wise although He has
constantly spoken of our rewards in heaven as well. The point is that we cannot expect that our
good works will be of any value at all if we don’t have the foundation of a
relationship with the King. Without that
relationship, we are like a foolish man who builds his house on the beach. It doesn’t matter how beautiful and
well-appointed it may be; without a solid foundational relationship with the
King, that house will be turned into so much Katrina debris.
Then Jesus
was finished and the crowds were “astonished” at His teaching. They were well used to hearing the experts in
the Law of Moses expound the opinions of the various rabbis on the fine points
of the Law. But this was earth-shaking
because they recognized that he spoke with authority.
Would they
be hearers or doers? In the next section,
Jesus will begin demonstrating that he did indeed have the authority to
proclaim this gospel.
© 2018 Eric
Thimell
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